Showing posts with label rain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rain. Show all posts

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Flat Stanley Does Connemara, part 2

Our intrepid travelling friend, Flat Stanley, continues. This time, the three of us headed to the west of Ireland to check out Connemara.

Flat Stanley and his new pal the retired racing duck from Oswegatchie Education Center. Stay tuned for more duck shenanigans.


Flat Stanley chillaxing at an old friary.

Us at Kylemore Abbey. It poured the entire day, so Stanley spent a lot of time couped up in my purse. You have to play it safe when one of your travel companions is paper, and could literally fall apart in the rain.

Us at the Quite Man museum in Cong. This area is where the movie was filmed.

Friday, November 11, 2011

Umbrellas: the most dangerous invention ever

Yeah, so the Irish weather is a fickle beast. We can literally have four seasons in one day. Take today for example: this morning it was lovely, a bit overcast, but in the mid 50s. Not more than two hours later there were gale force winds and torrential downpours... this bit lasted for most of the day. I was hoping it would let up so I wouldn't get soaked walking to the bus stop on campus, but I was sooo wrong. (I knew I shold have worn my Wellies). The skies opened up and poured out everything they had, the entire way home.


To add salt to a very soggy wound, the walk home to the flat from the bus stop got even worse. Yup, worse than wet jeans and a soaked through raincoat...

Almost immediately after getting off the bus, I was jabbed in the abdomen by a man wielding a giant golf umbrella. He was struggling to open it, not paying attention to where he was walking, and jabbed me. Super. This is extra awful, because as some of you may know, getting my eye poked out by an umbrella is one of my craziest fears. Well, since living in Ireland, I no longer think it's that crazy of a fear.

I got splashed/soaked by three different vehicles, because properly built drainage systems in Ireland don't seem to exist, so roads always flood. AND, as I was crossing the road, I nearly got run over. Most of the cars here are standard, so there's a bit of a roll-back before they go forward, well I thought I had taken that into account when crossing the street. Apparently not. The driver let it roll back a lot, and bumped me. WITH HIS CAR! It scared the BAJEESUS right out of me. At this point, I was no more than 5 minutes from home and was completely drenched and looked like a drowned rat. That is one hell of a way to end what I thought was going to be a good day. Note: I measure good days by whether or not I catch the express bus to campus in the morning.

The day did turn around, I got to Skype with my lovely sister-friend and nephew(ish) for nearly an hour today and the husband took me out for a killer burger. Life is soggy, yet grand.